It's another return to those so-called thrilling days of yesteryear, this time to June of 1971. Nixon sat in the Oval Office, the Rolling Stones' Brown Sugar topped the Top 40 charts and Summer of '42 and Billy Jack played at the box office. Hot pants were all the rage and leisure suits were on the horizon. What we later took for granted, cell phones, personal computers, VCRs, CDs, the World Wide Web, etc., were still ideas percolating in the fertile minds of people for whom the phrase, the future is now, really meant something.
It was also the month I turned eighteen, still too young to drink legally but old enough for admission into one of those Friday night dances sponsored by the Powhatan Mills Fire Department.
Powhatan Mills then was a rural farming community, not the sprawling, built-up suburb it became a generation later. Its fire department was a volunteer affair operating out of a modest red brick firehouse on Main Street. On Friday nights they sponsored mixers for the 18 to 21-year-old set. "Lot's of hot poon," a friend had told me, and poon, hot, cold or lukewarm, topped my wish list in those first heady days after high school graduation. So, taking separate cars, I met my friend Jeff there.
Upon entering, it didn't take long before we realized that we were out of our element. We were prep school boys from Dorchester Park, an upper-middle class area in the city. Our dads were professionals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, corporate businessmen. These kids were from working class families, sons and daughters of diesel mechanics and farmers, plumbers and electricians. They dressed the part and looked the part. Many of the boys donned jeans with boots and wore their hair short. For the girls, it was tight jeans, Capri pants or shorts, and there were lots of them to chose from—some hot, some not, but apparently available.
We paid our two-buck cover fee and then took seats in folding chairs lined up against the wall. More girls were dancing than boys, many with each other. There was no live band, just a twenty-something deejay spinning a stack of 45s. We got "looks," a sure sign to us that these people knew we weren't from around these parts. If our duds didn't give us away—our creased and cuffed, semi-dress slacks, stripped button-down shirts and loafers—our hair did, worn below the ears per what our cultural kind considered cool at the time.
We sat there a while, evaluating the situation, trying to get comfortable. We might have left if not for a couple girls we had in our sights, including a cute little blond in white shorts. To my mind, she oozed sexuality, raw and raunchy, whether she was dancing with another girl or sitting across the dimly lit room with her legs crossed, sipping a soft drink from a clear plastic cup. Using a World War One metaphor, I said, "Okay, it's over the top we go," when the deejay put on Tina Turner's Proud Mary.
Upon my approach, she looked sideways at her girlfriend and chuckled, as if to say, 'are you kidding?' Then, to my surprise, she stood up and let me lead her to the middle of the dance floor. Mingling with the crowd, we bounced and shuffled our way through the song's spirited rhythm. The noise made conversation impossible, so I tried to communicate through smiles and eye contact. She averted my efforts, glancing around the room as if she was looking for someone she knew. When the song ended, she thanked me, then returned to her seat without looking back.
"Well, I tried," I told Jeff after sitting down. "She's apparently not interested."
"You give up too easy, Marc," he said. "Get her on a slow number." Jeff knew that even the anticipation of being shot down made me nervous. "Oh, come on. You've got nothing to lose. These chicks aren't exactly high class."
High class or not, I felt anxious approaching her again when The Temptations' "Just My Imagination" started spinning. "One moment," she said, putting her index finger up. Then, after scanning the room, she nodded and took my hand.
"Expecting someone?" I asked after the song's opening bars ("each day through my window I watch her as she passes by...").
She shrugged. Ignoring my question, she said, "I love this song, don't you?"
I nodded, told her that the Temptations were my favorite Motown group. The music was soft enough to where we could hear each other. As we danced at close to arms length, I introduced myself, and she responded. Connie was her name. She couldn't have stood more than five-three. I was around five-nine, and her head came just up to my chin. I tried to get something going using that old shopworn standby: "Do you live around here?"
"I do but I bet you don't," she said. I shrugged. "Thought so." She made no attempt to hide her smug gratification when I revealed where I lived. "I can spot you Joe College prep types from a mile away." Then she looked away, singing along with the music: "but it was just my imagination running away with me..."
"It sounds like you're not too crazy about us prep types," I said.
That got her attention. Turning to me, she leaned back and said, "Not true at all. Sorry, I didn't mean to come off that way." She looked sincere, staring up at me with her pretty, blue-gray eyes.
"That's okay," I said. "I guess it is kind of obvious."
She gave me a warm smile. "Just relax, Marc." She stepped closer and snuggled against my chest. "This should make you feel better."
It did. I felt the fine contours of her body, firm and compact. Her hair, styled in a shoulder-length shag, smelled as if she just shampooed it. We talked through the last minute of the song, and in that one minute, I learned that she had graduated from Powhatan High the year before and cashiered at Sears to save money for college.
When the song ended, she again glanced around the room as if she was expecting someone. This time she looked worried, afraid that whomever she had in mind would catch her doing something wrong. "Well, nice meeting you," she said when the song ended. She headed back to her seat before I could reach out to dance another slow one, the Carpenters' "For All We Know."
Jeff was still on the dance floor, making time with a longhaired brunette when I returned to my seat. Looking across the room, I saw a tall, raw-boned guy walk over to Connie. From their animated conversation, they appeared to know each other. Then he started looking at me, pointing to me while conversing with her. It looked like they were arguing. The next thing I knew, he was taking long strides across the room, headed right for me. "Hey pal," he said, "do you always make a habit of dancing close with another guy's girlfriend?"
Too stunned to respond right away, I sized him up, from his brown, greasy hair with a spit curl plastered over his forehead to his sinewy arms and lightly freckled face. He wore jeans and a plaid, short-sleeved shirt—typical for a native son of Powhatan Mills.
"Girlfriend?" was all I could think to say in response.
"Girlfriend. Steady girlfriend," he said emphatically, folding his arms across his chest. "Connie's my steady girlfriend. Got it?"
"I didn't know."
"Well, now you do."
I didn't take kindly to someone telling me who I could or could not dance with. On the other hand, as noted, I was an outsider, perhaps an interloper in his eyes. Still, no Powhatan Mills hick was going to push me around. "Connie didn't seem to mind," I said, standing up to face him.
"Dude, don't press your luck with me," he said. His arms went from his chest to his sides, slightly bent.
We glared at each other, standing just inches apart. He had reach and height on me, though I surmised that he wasn't as strong, not unless he could bench press over 300 pounds, doubtful. He was tall and wiry, where I was on the stocky side. But I wasn't a fighter, preferring to settle matters with words, not fists. "Look, man," I said, "if you have a beef it's with Connie, not me. She didn't say a word about having a steady boyfriend."
Before he could respond, three people came on the scene—Jeff after his slow dance, my nemesis' friend and Connie. "Bobby, that's enough," she said. Turning to me, she said, "Sorry, Marc, I wasn't sure he'd be here."
Now it made sense why she had perused the room. The last thing I wanted was to get in the middle of what appeared to be a lovers' dispute. "This is none of my business," I said, throwing my hands up.
"You damn right it ain't," Bobby barked, and then grabbed Connie's arm in an attempt to lead her back across the room.
When she resisted, Bobby's friend stepped in. He looked a few years older, built somewhat like me. I imagined he developed his muscles from pitching hay rather than pumping iron in a gym: au naturel. "Let her go, man," he advised, "before you get us both thrown out of here."
